History Main / TheCakeIsALie

* ''Literature/ChillinInAnotherWorldWithLevelTwoCheatPowers'': Wanting to avoid the embarrassment of a rejected hero candidate staying around, the king of Klyrode gives Banaza money and gear in exchange for his silence and going away to a remote location. Banaza accepts this as a more or less fair trade, until he discovers the bag holding everything is enchanted to attract monsters, the provider gear is subpar, and the bag is also enchanted to return to the king after Banaza dies, proving the gifts are insincere and that the king arranged for him to die all along.

* ''Anime/TenchiMuyoWarOnGeminar'': Kenshi Masaki gets somehow sent to another world. Dagmyer and his men take him in and promise to return him to Earth if he assassinates Lashara. When Kenshi fails, Dagmyer [[YouHaveFailedMe orders his men to kill him]], then mocks him and confesses that he was already [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness planning to kill him even if he succeeded]] and he doesn't how to send someone to Earth and thinks it is impossible. This backfires when Kenshi kicks all his men's asses and escapes, the betrayal galvanizing him to join Lashara.

* ''Manga/YuGiOhGX'': Midori Hibiki duels Reggie Mackenzie in a Shadow Game with Reggie promising to tell her what happened to her brother Koyo and how to save him from his coma if she wins. Reggie wins, and right before Midori falls into a coma as a penalty for losing, she reveals she does not know how Koya got into a coma or how to save him.

* Burrell Smith (who designed the hardware for the original [[UsefulNotes/AppleMacintosh Macintosh]]) would often promise to [[http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=I%27ll_Be_Your_Best_Friend.txt&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date&detail=medium be your best friend]] in order to get you to do something. This relationship, however, only lasts a few milliseconds.

* ''Manga/YuGiOhGX'': Midori Hibiki duels Reggie Mackenzie in a Shadow Game with Reggie promising to tell her what happened to her brother Koyo and how to save him from him coma if she wins. Reggie wins, and right before Midori falls into a coma as a penalty for losing, she reveals she does not know how to save Koyo.

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E61TheSilence The Silence]]", a talkative man bets another member of his exclusive club a fortune that he can't remain silent for a full year. He succeeds [[spoiler:by having his vocal cords severed in secret]], but the man he made the bet with admits that he's flat broke and could never have paid the agreed-upon sum.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Jumanji}}'': At the beginning of "Masked Identity," Rock invites Peter to play football with him and his gang if he gets their ball down from the tree. When he does so and asks whose team he's on, Rock pushes him into the mud and mockingly says "nobody's" before running off with his gang to play without Peter. He tries this again at the end of the episode, but Peter is not fooled this time.

* Jodee Berry, a former Hooters waitress in Panama City, Florida, won a contest for most beer sales held by her boss, who announced that the grand prize was a new Toyota. On the day of the presentation, she was blindfolded and led to the restaurant's parking lot to receive her prize...[[https://www.boredpanda.com/toy-yoda-toyota-hooters-prank-gone-wrong-jodee-berry which turned out to be]] a [[IncrediblyLamePun Toy]] [[Franchise/StarWars Yoda]]! She quit immediately and won an undisclosed settlement against Gulf Coast Wings, Hooters' parent company, a year later. [[https://www.heraldnet.com/news/former-hooters-waitress-settles-toy-yoda-lawsuit Part of the settlement included a Toyota car of her choice.]]

* Jodee Berry, a former Hooters waitress in Panama City, Florida, won a contest for most beer sales held by her boss, who announced that the grand prize was a new Toyota. On the day of the presentation, she was blindfolded and led to the restaurant's parking lot to receive her prize...[[ https://www.boredpanda.com/toy-yoda-toyota-hooters-prank-gone-wrong-jodee-berry which turned out to be]] a [[IncrediblyLamePun Toy]] [[Franchise/StarWars Yoda]]! She quit immediately and won an undisclosed settlement against Gulf Coast Wings, Hooters' parent company, a year later. [[http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/05/09/toy-yoda.htm Part of the settlement included a Toyota car of her choice.]]

** In a similar case in the 1990s, Pepsi had run TV ads advertising their latest promotion in which customers could accumulate "Pepsi points" from bottle caps and redeem them for various merchandise. The TV ads ended with a kid landing a AV-8 Harrier II jump jet in a school parking lot claiming you needed 7,000,000 points (most merchandise was in the 15-500 range). One person seeing the ad, managed to collect the required amount (in actuality he collected the minimum number of points and sent a certified check for the rest at $.10 a point, which the contest rules allowed) and attempted to claim the fighter jet. Despite this obviously being a joke, the contestant [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_v._Pepsico,_Inc sued]] to enforce the offer. The judge ruled the advertisement was obviously a joke, noting, among other things, that the Department of Defense would never allow it to begin with. He attempted an appeal, which was immediately dismissed. Just to be safe, Pepsi raised the number of points to 700,000,000 (a number that meant it would no longer make financial sense to do it at the $.10 a point method) for subsequent airings of the ad.

* Jodee Berry, a former Hooters waitress in Panama City, Florida, won a contest for most beer sales held by her boss, who announced that the grand prize was a new Toyota. On the day of the presentation, she was blindfolded and led to the restaurant's parking lot to receive her prize...which turned out to be a [[IncrediblyLamePun Toy]] [[Franchise/StarWars Yoda]]! She quit immediately and won an undisclosed settlement against Gulf Coast Wings, Hooters parent company, a year later. [[http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/05/09/toy-yoda.htm Part of the settlement included a Toyota car of her choice.]]

* In 2005, Florida "attorney" (we use the term loosely) Jack Thompson sent an open letter to the president of the Entertainment Software Association saying he would donate $10,000 to the charity of Take Two CEO Paul Eibler's choice if someone made a "murder simulator" game to his specifications. When someone did just that, Thompson refused to pay, saying his offer was satire. So the ''Webcomic/PennyArcade'' guys did it instead, with a note on the check saying "For Jack Thompson, because Jack Thompson won't."

* Christopher Columbus promised a reward of 10,000 silver coins to first member of his crew who spotted land. But when crewman Rodrigo de Triana did so, Columbus got out of honoring his claim by stating that he had already spotted land in the form of a flickering light the previous night, and thus he was the technical winner, while Triana had only ''confirmed'' the sighting.

* Although the exact amount is disputed, Thomas Edison reportedly promised $10-50,000 ($1.1 million today) to anyone who could solve the crippling inefficiencies in his prototype automobile motors and electrical generators. When UsefulNotes/NikolaTesla solved them both, Edison refused to honor his agreement (in what can only be described as a dick move, Edison told Tesla that he didn't understand "American humor").

* During WWII, the Nazis [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theresienstadt_%28film%29 made a propaganda film]] to trick the opposition into rejecting the reality of Nazi death camps. They dressed up the concentration camp/ghetto, ''Theresienstadt'' (located in what is now the Czech Republic), to look like a pleasant little settlement, with phony mock-ups of quaint store-fronts and cafes and forced the prisoners to pretend to be happy and entertained. They enlisted the film making know-how of professional actor and director, Kurt Gerron...a Jew who was a prisoner there. The Nazis promised Gerron that he would be spared if he did this project. Upon completion, however, Gerron, along with most who appeared in the film, were shipped off to Auschwitz to their deaths.

* ''VideoGame/{{Portal}}'': TropeNamer ("THE CAKE IS A LIE" being written on walls in various places by Doug Rattmann, an employee turned test subject). Note that there actually ''was'' cake--it just wasn't for ''you''.

* In ''Videogame/HeroesOfMightAndMagic'' ''III'' ''The Shadow of Death'', Sandro hires Crag Hack and Gem to retrieve minor artifacts for seemingly benign purposes and promises them generous payment. Both times he runs off without paying the moment he gets all of the artifacts. Even worse, said "minor" artifacts are actually two sets of artifacts that combine to form extremely powerful artifacts.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Gothic}}'', at the Free Mine, there's a guy named Baloro who will give you a quest to get him some food for a party. In return, he promises you [[SchmuckBait a weapon that can kill anything]]. By this point, you probably know better how things work at the Colony... but if you are used to more "traditional" [[Main/RolePlayingGame RPGs]], you think quest=reward, especially since this particular quest is even named "Baloro's Weapon"; so you go all over the valley searching for the items he ordered - some of them surprisingly hard to find. Of course, when you deliver the goods and ask for the weapon, he [[spoiler: just mocks you for your troubles and gives you nothing, not even some Ore. The bastard doesn't even invite you to the party]]! Oh, well, at least it was worth the experience... 300 XP, to be precise.
* ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys'' has a very literal example of this. It's implied heavily that the killer was able to lure his unfortunate [[WouldHarmAChild child victims]] into a windowless, camera-less back room by dressing up in a mascot costume and promising the kids cake and pizza if they follow him, meaning the promise he made and then didn't follow through with was *literally* cake.

--> [[spoiler:'''Ymir''']]: "The Dark Lord’s throne and sword belong to Surt alone. I was only a pawn in getting [[spoiler:the key]]. He wasn't going to give me anything, was he?"

* ''Film/TheIsland'' is based on "The Clonus Horror" and has a similar lie. The clones are told that they are preparing for a trip to "The Island," the only haven from a "virus outbreak."

* In ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarepants'':

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': Used in the episode "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS4E20WhackingDay Whacking Day]]". On the same day that Superintendent Chalmers is due to visit the school for an inspection, Principal Skinner curiously announces via the intercom that the five most unruly boys in the school, including Bart, have inexplicably been awarded free mountain bikes, which they are to collect from a utility room in the basement. Skinner shuts them in and locks the door, revealing what should have been obvious all along: it was just a ploy to get them out the way for the inspection (even then, Nelson asks "[[TheyJustDontGetIt when are we gonna get our mountain bikes?]]"). Becomes a BrickJoke at the end of the episode, when Skinner [[OhCrap suddenly realizes]] that all of the boys except Bart are still locked in the room; he and Willie rush to the school with a collection of mountain bikes, hoping to trade them for their silence.

* In ''Manga/LiarGame'', during the Contraband game, Yokoya enforced a point-based loyalty scheme to guarantee loyalty from the members of his team that they would spy on the other members and report any dishonesty to him, where he would give more money to the snitch. Fukunaga suspects that Yokoya didn't even keep count; he just wanted the members to feed him as much information of the others as possible.

** The ''Fairy Dance'' Arc fits this well. According to given sources of ''Alfheim Online'', one can try the "Grand Quest", which would give his or her race a meeting with the Fairy King Oberon and promote the entire aligned race to the powerful Alfs. However, because only one can complete such a task, there is a lot of competition between the races, despite the alliances. [[spoiler: It turns out the whole thing is a hoax. The "Grand Quest" is an ImpossibleTask and the main entrance impassable to normal players. What's more, there is no city or castle at the top of the tree that was said in the game, as it is merely a research center for the psychotic administrator and staff to experiment on human brains.]]

* In ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'', the nation of [[ANaziByAnyOtherName Marley]] uses the promise of full citizenship to lure Eldians into volunteering their children for military service in the [[ChildSoldiers Warrior]] [[SuperSoldiers Program]]. These children are raised to be fanatically loyal to Marley, and believe if they can prove their loyalty and rack up enough military achievements....their kinsmen still living in the ghettos will be given better treatment or even freed someday. This is a complete lie, of course. Marley leverages their families to keep the Warriors in line, and uses them as disposable resources. Once their usefulness as a military asset comes to an end, Marley intends to answer the [[FinalSolution Eldian Question]] by exterminating them all.

* Played with in the Series/{{Buffy|the Vampire Slayer}} spin-off novel ''Pretty Maids All In A Row'': The novel focuses on Spike and Dru, who are hired by a demon to do a job for him, with the promised reward being a powerful magical artifact Dru has decided she wants. A third of the way through, there's a flashback revealing that this artifact was stolen off the demon sixty years ago -- but then two-thirds of the way through, there's another flashback revealing that thirty years ago the demon took it back. [[spoiler:Finally, when Spike and Dru come to claim the reward, he admits that when he hired them he'd already given it away to somebody else he wanted a favour from. Final score: DoubleSubversion.]]

* ''Series/DoctorWho'': "Yes, I lied, it's a jammy dodger. But [[ItMakesSenseInContext I was promised tea!]]"

** In "The Sontaran Strategem"/"Poison Sky" two-parter, The Sontarans attempt to wipe out humanity by altering the atmosphere, and seek out the aid of TeenGenius Luke Rattigan so that they can covertly enact this scheme via a device fitted in cars supposedly to suppress carbon emissions. Luke helps them [[IntelligenceEqualsIsolation due to the alienation his brilliance invites]], and is seduced with the promise of a new planet dubbed "Castor-36" that he and other young geniuses in the academy he set up can inhabit.[[note]]Luke dubbed it Earth.2, and more vainly, "Luke's World", though he was possibly joking.[[/note]] Once Luke gives the offer to them, they refuse, and upon returning to Sontarans, the general admits he was yanking his chain with that whole "Castor-36" thing, and [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness would've had him and the whole group killed the moment they arrived on their ship]]. Indeed, Luke barely escapes with his life shortly after learning this.

* [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]] on ''Series/BoyMeetsWorld''. When Mr. Feeney has trouble getting Shawn to attend his SAT preparation class, he makes up a lie on the spot about there being delicious cake at the class. But later we see Shawn at the class, and he is in fact eating a big piece of cake. Given that Mr. Feeney would have felt guilty about lying to Shawn, it's likely that he arranged for the cake himself.
* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': In "The Silence", a talkative man bets another member of his exclusive club a fortune that he can't remain silent for a full year. He succeeds [[spoiler: by having his vocal cords severed in secret]], but the man he made the bet with admits that he's flat broke and could never have paid the agreed-upon sum.
* The crew on ''Series/{{Farscape}}'' once visited an agricultural world where tomorrow was ''always'' a rest day, but it never came because the workers' memories kept getting re-written as to what day it was.

* ''[[Series/TheWalkingDead2010 The Walking Dead]]'': Eugene Porter is having a breakdown over the disappearance of his girlfriend Stephanie and has shut himself in his apartment trying to deduce where she went. Princess comes to his door, and though Eugene initially asks her to leave, Princess says she brought a tray of lasagna for them to eat if he lets her in. Eugene acquiesces, only to discover the tray was a Trojan horse to let her in to talk to him.

* In ''Film/PartsTheClonusHorror'', the clones are told that they are preparing for a trip to America, which is portrayed like paradise.

** In "The Wolf and the Crane:" A wolf has a chicken bone lodged in his throat and says that he'll reward a crane handsomely if he sticks his lone beak down his throat and removes it. When the crane does so and asks for his reward, the wolf says that allowing him to stick his head into his mouth without biting it off was just that.

[[SelfDemonstratingArticle There will be cake at the bottom of this page.]]

A character, usually an antagonist, promises another character, usually the hero, a reward if they can complete some task for them. This can be anything from fame, to riches, to anything to do with a LoveInterest, to frosted desserts, or pretty much anything generally considered desirable.

*** In the portal 2 level, you can, of course, find Doug Ratman's (in)famous "The Cake Is A Lie" graffiti... but instead of trailing off ominously it ends with "The cake is in the kitchen on floor 2."

* This occurs to Lina Inverse in the first ''LightNovel/{{Slayers}}'' movie. The character in question isn't evil and doesn't plan on hurting Lina per se, but it's definitely not a case of Moving The Goalposts. Needing Lina to risk her life by going back in time hundreds of years in order to save a much younger version of himself, his love, and a group of elves from a mazoku, the elderly ghost of an adventurer promises Lina to show her the location of "the fountain of growth", which she interprets, and is led on to believe, will finally make her tall, curvy, and stacked. In reality, the ghost has lied, and the fountain in question is the reverse of the fountain of youth, aging things that touch its waters to death, making Lina's trials and tribulations completely meaningless (in her eyes). However, since Lina was particularly dumb for believing him, and since he's really the ancestor of her (not-yet-encountered-yet-at-the-time) love and life-long partner Gourry, it worked out in her favor anyways.

* ''LightNovel/SwordArtOnline''

* In ''LightNovel/HeavyObject'', Elites are scouted as children and will usually spend the rest of their life piloting Objects. Legitimacy Kingdom Elites have the option of retiring to a civilian life, but must first meet the requirements of the Civilian Acclimation Assistance System to prove they are capable of functioning outside of combat. However, the training and modifications needed to prepare an Elite are so massively expensive and time-consuming that the military has no intention of letting any resignation be accepted. As such, the final interview of the System will always end in a rejection.
* In ''LightNovel/CheatMagicianLifeThatStartedFromBeingJudgedUseless'', Princess Camilla Resenberg promises Kento, the protagonist, a place in her army of conscripts if he survives making it across a dangerous forest, that she shoved him into at sword-point, to an allied border fortress. Not only was the fortress in question in another country, and thus ''not'' an ally, the forest itself is home to many different species of monsters. Naturally, she never expected him to survive even if he somehow made it to the other side. For the rest of the class, she promised to reward and repatriate them if they managed to do their job as soldiers well enough, after she tricked them into putting on slave-bracelets. Turns out she never planned to keep that promise either. [[spoiler: In fact, the repatriation spell doesn't even exist. When Kento found out, he nearly killed Camilla on the spot, only sparing her because his own undead summons stopped him.]]

** In a similar case in the 1990s, Pepsi had run TV ads advertising their latest promotion in which customers could accumulate "Pepsi points" from bottle caps and redeem them for various merchandise. The TV ads ended with a kid landing a AV-8 Harrier II jump jet in a school parking lot claiming you needed 7,000,000 points (most merchandise was in the 15-500 range). One person seeing the ad, managed to collect the required amount (in actuality he collected the minimum number of points and sent a certified check for the rest at $.10 a point, which the contest rules allowed) and attempted to claim the fighter jet. Despite this obviously being a joke, the contestant [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_v._Pepsico,_Inc sued]] to enforce the offer. The judge ruled the advertisement was obviously a joke, noting, among other things, that the Department of Defense would never allow it to begin with. He attempted an appeal, which was immediately dismissed.